With the increased use of sheet metal panels in building construction, there has been an increased need to address ways in which the traditional standing seam roof can be manufactured. For example, the typical standing seam roof utilizes adjacent metal panels which are affixed at their edges and utilize separate attachment clips spaced along the standing seam by which the standing seam is attached to the roof underlayment whether it be in the form of rafters, plywood or other conventional underlayment. The use of such attachment clips involves several problems. First, the use of clips means that the fabricator has additional parts to manipulate and utilize when manufacturing a standing seam roof on a structure. Furthermore, the use of and manipulation of such clips requires additional labor steps thereby increasing the labor costs of attaching a standing seam roof assembly. Moreover, in the case of dissimilar metals between the clips and the standing seam roofing material (e.g., copper versus iron-based clips), there is a potential problem of galvanic reaction between the dissimilar metals. In part, this problem is resolved by the use of relatively expensive stainless steel clips in order to reduce the potential or galvanic corrosion.
Moreover, the use of clips leads to distortion of the seamed vertical leg of the standing seam roof where the overlapped edges of the roofing panels and the attachment clip have been seamed into the final standing seam configuration.
Accordingly, it is highly desirable to make a more efficient standing seam roof structure and method compared to such prior art which does not require the use of attachment clips and the attendant drawbacks. Thus, the elimination of such attachment clips has the potential to lead to faster standing seam roof application, more cost effective application and more durable application with a more pleasant final appearance than the prior art.
The prior art connector clip generally discussed above is exemplified by U.S. Pat. No. 3,312,028 to Schroyer. In particular, the '028 patent is an example of the use of a standing seam roof formed of interlocked channel sections which utilize a connector to tie down a series of connected panels upon a plurality of underlying rafters. The prior art connector clip is fabricated of a thin metal strip, bent to provide an intermediate body and an open curl at one end thereof and a foot bent at right angles from the other end. The foot is adapted to be secured to a rafter by a nail driven through a nail hole in the foot. The body of the connector clip is adapted to be sandwiched between adjacent side flanges of attached panels and the curl is adapted to be locked between the coupled bead and sleeve of the panels. As best seen in FIG. 9 of the '028 patent, the connector clip is nailed into the underlayment rafter and adjacent rafters have similar connector clips and nails to securely hold the roof structure to the rafters.
The prior art also includes a self locking roofing system wherein a nail strip is incorporated into one edge of the self locking panel. Such self locking roof systems are available from Copper Sales, Inc. under the trademark UNA-CLAD, model UC-4 “No Clip” Architectural Series Roofing System. This system does not involve a field-seamed standing seam connection wherein adjacent panels are deformed at the work location to form a roof as disclosed herein.